


Father Christmas

by icebluenothing



Category: Doctor Who, Doctor Who (2005)
Genre: Gen
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2013-06-11
Updated: 2013-06-11
Packaged: 2017-12-14 16:52:01
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,210
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/839152
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/icebluenothing/pseuds/icebluenothing
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Christmas is no time to be alone. The Doctor has a chance meeting with a man named Pete Tyler, and his infant daughter Rose.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Father Christmas

The Doctor pulled his coat a little tighter around himself. The leather didn't do much to keep out the cold. He shouldn't be this cold -- he'd once faced the vacuum of space without a suit, unbroken and unbowed, but right now, he felt the cold right down to the bone. He didn't feel warm inside, was the problem.   
  
Still, the city was cheering, red and green lights everywhere. The sky was as dull and gray as the buildings, and London looked blind to him without its Eye opened yet, but everywhere it was Christmas, and the people around him were happy and laughing, out with their families and their friends.   
  
Good on them, he thought. Christmas was no time to be alone.   
  
He thought back again to another London night, years ago for him, decades away for everyone around him, when he'd asked, half on impulse, a young shop girl to come with him. When she'd said no. He hadn't asked anyone since. He didn't even quite know why. Wounded pride, maybe, he thought, with something like a smile. First Grace, then Rose -- after a while you stop asking people to dance.   
  
Still. It would be nice to have someone with him tonight.   
  
No particular reason to be here, no alien threats, no distress beacons, just a strange year and its charms -- the World Expo, and Comet Halley at perihelion; the Three Hundred and Thirty Five Years' War ending, without a single shot ever fired. The shuttle explosion, seven lives lost, and Chernobyl, so many more -- two steps forward, one back. Baby steps.   
  
And of course, Antarctica. Colder than this. The first time he'd ever died. The Cybermen, and Earth's twin dying with him in the night, and these people didn't believe, wouldn't remember, and the planet murmured and turned over and went back to sleep, all of it forgotten already.   
  
These people. These dear stupid apes, dreaming they were alone in all the universe. He smiled and shook his head.   
  
He stamped his feet and blew on his hands and wondered if he still had that great furry coat somewhere, the one he'd worn in Tibet. He wondered if it would still fit him if he did.   
  
Time to get in out of the cold. He looked up to see where he was and grinned at the sign. Henrik's Department Store. Years from now, he'd blow this place to pieces. But tonight, this night, it was warm and bright, and full of so many people. Time to come in, and lose himself in the madding crowd for a while.   
  
# # # #   
  
The toy section was best. The children were best, at Christmastime -- still too young to be self-conscious, willing to believe, talking a mile a minute and staring in wide-eyed delight at every bright shiny bit of plastic someone wanted to sell them. He couldn't help smiling with them. Well, at them, a little.   
  
The adults were another matter. Rushed and thin-lipped and harried, the lot of them, as if the approach of Christmas had somehow been as much a surprise to them as it was to him when he'd arrived, and they'd been caught unprepared. My days come out of order, he thought; what's your excuse?   
  
He walked down an aisle, and in the middle of it, looking lost, was a young man carrying a baby, in what looked like an infant's car seat. He stared up at the shelves, the smile on his face the same smile the Doctor had seen on all the children, but he looked completely overwhelmed. He tried to balance the baby against his chest with one arm and reach up toward a crib on a high shelf --   
  
He saw the Doctor coming toward him and grinned, said, "Sorry, could you just -- ?"   
  
"Hmm? Oh! Sure. Give her here." A little uncertainly, the Doctor held his arms out.   
  
"Cheers, mate," the man said, and handed the baby over. He stretched his arms out and reached for the red crib.   
  
"Hello, there, baby," the Doctor said. "What's your name, then?"   
  
"That's my Rose," the man said, pulling the crib down. "Say hello, Rosie."   
  
The baby just looked up at him, no sound, just eyes wide and lips parted.   
  
"That's a good name, Rose," the Doctor said. "I knew a Rose once."   
  
The man reached for her. "Thanks," he said again. "There, that's a proper crib for you, isn't it, Rosie? Would you like that for Christmas, then?"   
  
The Doctor smiled. "That's the advantage of them at this age," he said. "You can do their Christmas shopping right in front of them."   
  
The man laughed. "Do you have children of your own?"   
  
The Doctor's smile faded. " . . . I used to, yeah."   
  
" -- Oh! Oh, I'm so sorry." The man frowned. "Sorry, I know how to put my foot right in it, don't I? That's what Jackie always tells me."   
  
The Doctor's eyes flickered back down to the baby. Rose. Jackie.   
  
"It's all right," he said evenly. He looked back up at the man. "So -- how you going to carry both that crib and that baby out of here?"   
  
The man's eyes widened. "Oh," he said again. "I hadn't thought that far ahead yet." He looked up at the Doctor helplessly. "Tell you what -- if you'll help me get that to the counter and out to my car, I'll buy you a pint at down at The Lamb and Flag."   
  
"Naah," the Doctor said, picking up the crib. "Free of charge. Advice and assistance obtainable immediately, just like it says on the tin."   
  
"Thanks so much," the man said, grinning. "I'm Pete Tyler, by the way."   
  
The Doctor just smiled back, and didn't offer his name.   
  
They started winding their way through the shoppers toward the front.   
  
"They have so much stuff for kids these days, don't they?" Pete said. "It's hard to know what to get. I want to get her everything. It's her first Christmas -- I want it to be right, you know?"   
  
The Doctor nodded. He kept looking back at Rose, cradled in her father's arms.   
  
"At least it's easy now, she's still a baby," Pete was saying. "I never thought I'd have a girl! I'm not going to know what to get for a girl, when she gets older. I mean, look at this," he said, stopping.   
  
The Doctor looked back. They were passing the toys for older children now, and Rose's father was looking at a gleaming new bicycle, red like a rocket. His face was lit up.   
  
"Just look at it. You see that, Rose?" He pointed. "I had a bicycle just like that when I was little." He looked up at the Doctor. "But do you think she'll want one? When she's old enough? Or will she just want dolls and clothes and -- I have  _no_  idea, do I?" He laughed.   
  
"Half the fun is finding out," the Doctor said. "What they turn out like. What they'll want to do with their lives."   
  
"Yeah. Yeah, I'm sure you're right," Pete said, still looking back at the bike as he walked past. "I'd sure love to get her a bike like that someday, though."   
  
They reached the line for the register, and the Doctor set the crib on the floor.   
  
"Thanks again for helping me out," Pete said.   
  
"Think nothin' of it," the Doctor said. "It's Christmas."   
  
# # # #   
  
Some months later, the next time the Doctor found himself in London again at Christmastime, it was 1998. Twelve years later. He'd come here to prevent the Mandragora Helix from insinuating itself into the nascent Internet, its alien consciousness creeping into every home by phone wires and modems, and he had, of course, soundly defeated it with time to spare, in his own usual illimitable style.   
  
He felt like celebrating. He felt like having turkey and egg nog and popping open Christmas crackers, wearing a silly little paper crown and grinning his head off, kissing people under mistletoe.   
  
He got it into his head that he would track down Pete Tyler, see how he and his family were doing, maybe take him up on that offer and have a round or two down at the pubs.   
  
Cold, here, in the boneyard.   
  
He pulled his coat tight around himself again, stared up at the slate grey sky as the first flakes of snow started to fall. He looked down at the marker again.   
  
Just the name, Peter Edward Tyler, and the years, 1955-1987. Such a tiny piece of metal to mark the passing of a life. Either he hadn't wanted a grander marker, or they couldn't afford one. The latter, most likely.   
  
His first Christmas with Rose was his last. It wasn't fair, the Doctor thought, not for the first time.   
  
He remembered how many times he had amused his own father with those words, when he was very young. It's not fair, he would scream, it's not fair, _it's not fair!_    
  
Life isn't fair, his father would say. The sooner you learn that, the more content with your life you'll be.   
  
He hadn't learned it. He never learned it. Most people grow up and grow out of that small insistent voice, railing against the dark. He had listened to it, nurtured it, built it into the fire that drove his engines.   
  
This wasn't fair. This, right here.   
  
All this man had wanted, this ordinary man, was to give his daughter Christmas presents. Tell her bedtime stories, take her to the seaside. Watch her grow up and leave home and fall in love and break his heart and do all the things that daughters do.   
  
Why have Christmas? Why have Christmas at all if we can't go on having Christmases?   
  
He had seen so much, on so many worlds, and he didn't understand death. He had walked with ghosts and gods, and he had used up nine lives like a cat, and he didn't understand death, wouldn't understand it, couldn't accept it. He had no more idea than anyone else what happens to us when we die. Where we go. If we go anywhere at all.   
  
It isn't fair.   
  
Everything has its time, his father had told him, all those centuries ago, when his first pet had died, its hearts and lungs stilled, its fur grown cold. Everything has its time and everything dies.   
  
It's not fair. He felt like screaming. So many people he couldn't save. Here was another one, now that he knew he'd died, now that that knowledge was burned into his timeline. The moving finger writes, and having writ, moves on --   
  
He wanted to go track down Jackie and Rose, tell them how sorry he was, tell them how much he wished he could change this. But he couldn't tell them anything. Couldn't show up at their door like the ghost of Christmas Past --   
  
He stopped, eyes wide. Thought for a moment. And bolted back to the TARDIS.   
  
# # # #   
  
Pete Tyler had the crib safely in the back seat of his car, and was buckling Rose's car seat in place, and nearly hit his head on the car roof when the Doctor tapped him on the shoulder.   
  
"Oh! I thought you'd gone," Pete said, scrambling upright and looking at him.   
  
"I came back," the Doctor said. "Listen, I hate to ask this, but I need to buy a present for a friend's daughter, and I'm a few quid short."   
  
" -- Oh?" Pete looked slightly wary.   
  
"Yeah. She's twelve, and talking to you reminds me -- I'm sure she'd love a red bicycle."   
  
"Seriously?" Pete laughed a little. "How much are you short?"   
  
The Doctor told him, and Pete blanched. The Doctor could tell what he was thinking. That's too much, we need the money, Jackie will kill me --   
  
But then suddenly a smile burst across the man's face. "Oh, what the hell," he said. "It's Christmas, innit?"   
  
# # # #   
  
1998:   
  
Rose and Jackie were fast asleep in their rooms. The Doctor quietly rolled the bicycle into place under the glow of the Christmas tree. He knew origami, Draconian paper-folding, Hoothi reed-craft, and higher-level planar geometry, but he couldn't for the life of him figure out how to gift-wrap a bicycle, so he'd settled for a huge green bow tied around the handlebars. He sat down to admire it, helping himself to the glass of milk and plate of cookies that had been left out.   
  
He felt warm, finally.   
  
He remembered Christmases past, when he was trapped here, UNIT Christmas parties, always standing a little apart, but enjoying himself just the same. Having somewhere to be. Sarah Jane had asked him once -- if he wasn't from Earth, why did he even celebrate Christmas?   
  
"I celebrate everything," he said now, quietly, in the red and green light.   
  
No more Christmases alone, he told himself.   
  
He went to let himself out quietly, the way he'd let himself in.   
  
This time he stopped at the bedroom door, the one that had the construction-paper Christmas tree on it, with "R-O-S-E" spelled out in glitter on the paper ornaments. He laid his palm flat against the door, imagining her fast asleep inside.   
  
"Did I happen to mention," he whispered, half to her and half to himself, "that it travels in time as well?"   
  
He stood there for just another moment, before he quietly let himself out.

**Author's Note:**

> Originally posted on LiveJournal on November 28, 2005. "This story is for my father, Milton Dale Montoure, who passed away in his sleep this past weekend, the night after Thanksgiving. Thank you, Dad, for all my Christmases."


End file.
